


a heavy soul (a hopeful man)

by strangetowns



Category: Druck | SKAM (Germany)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Established Relationship, M/M, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 14:23:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18412451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangetowns/pseuds/strangetowns
Summary: The sound of Matteo’s steps up the stairs are loud, but undeniably comforting. David’s glad for the proof that Matteo is back, and alive. He’d never admit it, if he’s going to be honest, because there are many other things that are worth more when they’re said out loud, words that actually serve a purpose; but when they’re apart, as circumstances often force them to be, things never feel quite right until they find each other again. Like David is missing some piece of himself.Something small and cracked. But essential.-David and Matteo and the small happinesses that can be found after the end of the world. Or: a post-apocalyptic AU.





	a heavy soul (a hopeful man)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cynical_optimist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynical_optimist/gifts).



> Happy birthday, Lyds!!! I hope you have the most wonderful day, and I hope this tiny makes you smile bc you deserve to be happy today <33
> 
> Thank you muchly to [Crystal](http://pronouncingitwang.tumblr.com/) and [Arin](http://arindwell.tumblr.com/) for beta reading this! Title is from "[You Only Need You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvE8L5njEok)" by Tom Rosenthal.

It’s not safe to stay in the same place for too long, not when they still don’t quite know everything about who or what is out there. The violence has died down some since the early days but fear is not an instinct David has ever unlearned easily, and besides it’s kept him alive enough times maybe he doesn’t want to let go of it. He’s been trying to keep track of where things are as they go, scratching the lines of the land on his haphazard collection of hand-drawn maps with the nub of his last pencil. So at least they know how to get back to the fragile settlements built atop ruins and rubble they’ve already encountered - these are what count as cities these days - as well as the territories they never want to return to again. If he and Matteo can find the people they’re looking for - and it’s been a few years, perhaps, but their hope is still as strong as it is silent - maybe they’ll circle round to one of the new cities and relearn what it’s like to belong somewhere. They might do that even if they can’t find their people.

For now, they wander the land. And that means they do what they must to survive.

Still, David will be sorry to leave this particular house when the time comes. It’d been stripped almost empty of anything useful by the time they got to it, they both checked multiple times, but somehow most of it is still intact, and in the bathroom there’s a single stained glass window overlooking the backyard, small and cracked and perfect. It felt like a bit of a miracle or perhaps a very large one the first time they saw it. He could hardly even believe it was real, this tiny marvel. He had to have Matteo tell him he saw the same thing too, the same delicate blues and greens and soaring abstract shapes. After you’ve lived through the end of the world you come to realize how difficult true beauty is to find, and some days David craves it so much it gnaws at his very bones. It’s impractical, he knows; there is no need for beauty when it comes to surviving the apocalypse. But he misses it all the same.

Maybe that’s why he can’t bring himself to look at the window for too long. It feels like it should belong to another world, another life. It reminds him viscerally that once, he belonged to that world too. It almost makes him miss that world more, which is a feeling he has absolutely no use for. So they’ve set up camp in an empty bedroom on the other side of the hallway and for good measure he’s closed the door to the bathroom, as if leaving it cracked open will let the preciousness of it seep away into the air. Irrational as it might be, for some reason the thought soothes him, that this beautiful thing might be protected from the cruel universe for just a little while longer.

He doesn’t belong in that room, anyway. He belongs here. In the darkness and the silence.

The front door on the first floor crashes open and David’s hand flies instinctively to the handle of the hatchet by his side. And then Matteo’s familiar voice rings out through the house - “Hello?” - and just like that, the tension leaves his body almost as quickly as it came.

David uncurls his fingers from the hatchet. “Up here,” he calls back, so that Matteo knows he hasn’t moved and that everything is okay.

The sound of Matteo’s steps up the stairs are loud, but undeniably comforting. David’s glad for the proof that Matteo is back, and alive. He’d never admit it, if he’s going to be honest, because there are many other things that are worth more when they’re said out loud, words that actually serve a purpose; but when they’re apart, as circumstances often force them to be, things never feel quite right until they find each other again. Like David is missing some piece of himself. 

Something small and cracked. But essential.

Matteo appears at the doorway of the bedroom, and at the sight of him - worn hood pulled over his head, mismatching socks and mittens on his hands and feet, three scarves wrapped round his neck - it really does feel like something’s sliding back into the right place again. Really does feel a bit easier to breathe. It’s enough that David can’t bring himself to feel bad about holding such a hopelessly self-indulgent cliche inside himself, after all this time.

“Everything okay?” David says.

Matteo grins, one of those gleamingly bright ones that were achingly rare in the early days. They’re not so much, anymore, as time goes by and the thought of living in a world after the apocalypse has started to feel almost normal. David has to be glad for that.

“Good haul,” Matteo says, and dumps the contents of his backpack to the floor.

David stares.

There’s the collection of supplies that are common spoils for a typical foraging trip - beaten up but otherwise intact packs of ramen, a few assorted cans, five thermoses David presumes is filled with water from the nearby stream. Two dead birds - it took Matteo a good while to get there, but at this point they’re both a decent enough shot with a slingshot that hunting is a fairly regular and necessary activity for them. A miraculous roll of toilet paper. Even more surprising, a candy bar with no holes or tears in the wrapper.

And the greatest treasure of all - a can of shaving cream, barely big enough to fit in the palm of his hand, and a single disposable razor.

David reaches out to take hold of the can, to feel the weight of it in his grip. He turns it in his hands, runs his fingers over the label. In a past life, to think that something like this might be so rare as to be shocking would be laughable. He isn’t laughing now.

After a while, it occurs to him that Matteo is waiting for a response. He clears his throat. “Where’d you go?”

“It’s a secret.” Matteo crouches in front of David and meets his eyes. “What do you think?”

It’s the way he says it. Like he’d never assume a thing about what David is feeling, though it’s probably written clear as day on his face. Like he genuinely wants to hear the answer. David blinks as his vision blurs suddenly and inexplicably at the question, throat maddeningly tight. He can’t remember the last time he shed actual tears - certainly far before the world as they knew it ended, he knows - and yet for all the horrors he’s lived through and the people he’s seen die in front of his eyes, this is what has him on the verge of tears. A boy who brought him this thing, this tiny little thing that in the grand scheme of life doesn’t even fucking matter, and who asked him a soft question about it in a soft voice. How infuriating.

He opens his mouth, and finds that nothing will come out of it. Matteo’s eyes grow gentle. He reaches out and grazes a thumb against David’s jawline.

“You could use the shave, anyway,” he says quite seriously, and now David is laughing, and he’s glad for it.

Matteo smiles a crooked smile.

“Coming?” he says, extending a hand to David.

David takes it.

Matteo pulls him to his feet and leads him across the hallway, grabbing the razor and a thermos from off the floor as they go. David feels absurd when his breath catches in his throat as they open the door, but Matteo runs a thumb across his knuckles as they step across the threshold and so he makes himself look at the window above the bathtub. If they’re going to go in here, he might as well take advantage of the opportunity to look at it before he can’t anymore. He wishes, vaguely, that he could take a picture of it, or that he had his old colored pencils and the space on his precious papers and the time to draw it out. Of course, all he has right now is his eyes and his memory, so he looks at it, and hopes that in the future he’ll remember.

They come to a stop in front of the sink. There won’t be any running water; that’s what the thermos is for. The mirror isn’t there anymore either, broken to pieces that are long gone. That’s okay, too. They squeeze shaving cream into their palms and smear it on each other’s faces gracelessly. It’s been so long since they’ve done anything like this. Matteo draws a smile on David’s forehead with foam, and David laughs and he lets him. Maybe he should care about the waste, maybe he should worry about if this is the last can of shaving cream they’ll ever see again. He doesn’t. A small wonder. He cares so much all the time.

But Matteo hasn’t stopped smiling since they stepped into this bathroom, and the blue and green of the stained glass window glows faintly off of his pale skin, and in the face of such resplendence it feels so good to forget why he has to care, even if it’s just for a little while, even if the feeling will disappear as soon as they leave this very room. He can admit that much to himself.

Matteo picks up the razor and David can feel something in the air between them shift. It’s quiet, now, more serious. Matteo looks at David with a question in his eyes. David stares back, watching, waiting to see what he’ll do. It’s the closest thing to acquiescence he can come right now.

Slowly, Matteo reaches out with one hand to take hold of David’s chin. Keeping it steady. He brings the razor to his cheek, drags it down across his skin. It’s a bit of a jolt to his system, this utterly familiar scrape across his face that feels utterly alien all at once. Sends his whole face tingling. His whole head swimming.

Matteo must see something in David’s expression, because he pauses. “Okay?”

David closes his eyes and focuses on the world around him. The steady pace of Matteo’s breathing, slow and measured in the still quiet of this room. The warmth of his hands against his face. A bird singing a faint song somewhere outside, beyond the stained glass window.

Someone has a blade to his skin, he thinks. It’s not like his life is in Matteo’s hands right now, but a lot of the time it might as well be. And Matteo’s life is in his.

This truth of their new world. This is what makes him careful.

He opens his eyes. Matteo is looking at him.

And he knows, then, what Matteo is really trying to ask.

_Can I be careful with you, for once?_

David feels himself nod.

And Matteo nods back, very slightly, and carries on.

He really is careful with his movements, painstakingly so. David stares at him, the purse of his chapped lips, the brush of his eyelashes as he casts his gaze downward. He’s concentrating very fiercely. It touches something inside David, something nameless and profound. Because this isn’t something they have to do to survive. And Matteo is taking it very seriously, as if they can afford this time, this luxury. 

And maybe they can, in this room with the stained glass window shining on this stained glass boy in front of him. Maybe being part of something that makes him feel this good isn’t a frivolous luxury at all.

It’s a foreign thought. He can’t pretend that it isn’t. He takes ahold of it in his mind, turns it around slowly, finds he doesn’t hate it. There is value to a moment like this, isn’t there? He doesn’t really know how to measure that. Maybe it’s the difference between living and surviving, however that might be quantified. Maybe he’d forgotten that there was a difference.

Maybe he’d forgotten it long before the world ended.

Matteo slides the razor down David’s cheek one last time, and turns David’s head to the light to squint at his jawline. “I think I did an okay job,” he says doubtfully.

David reaches up to swipe a finger through the shaving cream still clinging to Matteo’s face. “You did amazing.”

Matteo smiles, and passes him the razor.

David doesn’t move, for a moment. He looks down at the ground. He knows Matteo’s eyes are still on him. Which is good. He kind of wants them to be.

“I need to tell you something,” he says.

A pause. One borne of surprise, maybe. This isn’t a sentence either of them say very often. “Yeah?”

Now. Now he looks up, and catches Matteo’s gaze with his own.

“I missed you while you were gone,” he says.

There’s a beat of frozen silence. Like the stillness before a stone drops into water.

And then - 

A smile unfurling at the very corner of Matteo’s mouth, small, tender, heartbreakingly so. He turns his head, and suddenly his eyes are breathtakingly bright, shining with the dappled colors of the stained glass window. It’s really, really beautiful. David can hardly breathe.

“I missed you, too,” Matteo says.

And David doesn’t look away from him when he says that. He doesn’t want to. He wants to soak this all in, wants to commit every inch of this moment to his memory. To keep this feeling, these words, this everything inside of him forever.

“It’s a good thing we don’t have to right now,” David says. The words tremble in his mouth. He lets them go anyway; he has to.

“It’s a very good thing,” Matteo says. The corners of his eyes are so soft.

David smiles. He lifts the razor to Matteo’s cheek.

And now, all is quiet.

**Author's Note:**

> -Shout out to Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel for providing vague inspiration for the setting, mostly because it was the last post apoc story i read and I didn't feel like coming up with my own world lol but you really don't need to have read it to understand this [would highly recommend though!].
> 
> -Once again, shameless plug for my Lorde-inspired post-canon series about these two boys, which you can read [here](http://canonicallyanxious.tumblr.com/tagged/but-i-live-in-a-hologram-with-you) if you're interested.
> 
> -[4/10/19] check out this awesome [moodboard](http://arindwell.tumblr.com/post/184079113793) my friend [Arin](http://arindwell.tumblr.com/) made, also in honor of Lyd's birthday!
> 
> -Find me on [tumblr](http://canonicallyanxious.tumblr.com) or [twitter](http://twitter.com/canonlyanxious)!
> 
> Thank you for reading! <3


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